


the Cost of a Crown

by stubliminalmessaging



Series: Tumblr Request Fics [7]
Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, POV Second Person, Sorry guys, Thorin doesn't die but Fili and Kili do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stubliminalmessaging/pseuds/stubliminalmessaging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When first the battle had been won and most of the warriors felt a sense of relief and victory, you did not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the Cost of a Crown

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a request for tumblr user palaceoftheinnocents. Enjoy!

                You fight your way past the elven healers, hurling all manner of profanity at them as you do. You are only subdued, bawling and struggling, when a pair of fellow Iron Hills dwarves have to forcibly pull you from the room.

 

                While it is true that the battle has been won, orcs and goblins alike conquered and a tremulous truce erected between warring nations, such a tragic degree of loss can scarcely be called a victory. The full length of the losses suffered is not yet known to you, but surveying the mountainside after the battle reveals the sheer scale of the deaths.

 

                When first the battle had been won and most of the warriors felt a sense of relief and victory, you did not. You own wounds restricted your ability to go out onto the blood-soaked battlefield to find your companions, and you argue with and pull away from every passing medic that attempts to tend to you. Eventually exhaustion overtakes you and you fall victim to it, collapsing into the mud and filth.

 

                When you wake you are in hysterics. You are aching all over and you cannot feel most of your limbs but that does not stop you from wrenching yourself to your feet and staggering out of your room. It takes two elves and a dwarf to get you back into your bed and they have to bind you there to keep you from leaving again. You scream yourself hoarse calling for Thorin, but no one will give you any details about his condition. This only makes you more desperate and hostile.

 

                You exhaust yourself daily trying to pull yourself free of the binds. The straps leave angry red stripes on your wrists and ankles and you hurt your shoulder trying to dislocate it to escape. The elf that sets your shoulder back in place looks down his nose at you and sneers that you are a mutt that needs to be put down. When he tries to feed you later you bite one of his fingers and then he rips his hand away from you, cradling his bleeding appendage and cursing at you. You cannot spit and sputter enough to get the taste of his filthy elf blood out of your mouth.

 

                It has to be a week into your ‘recovery’ when you hear about the deaths of the princes. Two Iron Hills dwarves that you recognize from when you were younger come in to tidy your room and you feign sleep. They are chatty and annoying, no different from you remember them being, but at the very least it is because of their gossiping that you find out that Fili and Kili, heirs to the throne of Erebor, were mortally wounded in battle and that attempts to stabilize them failed. They died on two separate medical cots, reaching for each other and the blasted elves would not let them be together for the last seconds of their lives. Kili had gone first, dark eyes glassy and Fili had died crying not long after, teeth and mouth and beard red with his own blood.

 

                You barely keep your composure until the two dwarves leave and then you are sobbing. All you want to do is curl in on yourself like a caterpillar and never straighten out and face the world but your binds prevent you from doing so. You force yourself not to think about Thorin; try not to get apprehensive whenever anyone enters your room, carrying the bad news like a plague.

 

                It has to have been nearly a month when finally someone comes to your room and sits on the edge of your bed. You recognize him from times he traveled to the Iron Hills with Thorin, and you recall his name is Dwalin. He tells you gruffly and far too abruptly that the elves do not think Thorin is going to pull through. You do not get a word in edgewise as he tells you that the King has lost a leg and fallen to infection. He goes on to tell you that Dain has ordered the elves to keep at it until he is beyond saving but the pointy eared bastards only give him about another week at best.

 

                You do not expect comforting from Dwalin; you have never had a conversation with him but you know that he too is emotionally raw with his King hanging on the brink of life and death. A warrior like him has only one true love and allegiance and that is to his King. He crouches over you and lifts the back of your head to knock your foreheads together gently and when he pulls away you are in tears again.

 

                A week passes without further word on Thorin’s condition and every second that goes by sees your resolve and will to live weaken. You curse your binds less for the fact that you cannot move freely and seek company and more because you cannot find the nearest cliff to hurl yourself off of. You are not a prisoner in this room and this bed, but in your very life.

 

                You only managed to live outside of the bed and the binds for a day and a half. A medic comes in and deems you well enough to be up and moving around and you are released to hobble through the halls and corridors of the underground kingdom. You _try_ to live on, really you do, but every time you pass a deep mine shaft or an unstable tunnel that might collapse at any second you contemplate having an accident.

 

                You find one particularly deep shaft that is so deep and dark that you cannot see an end to it. You kick a rock down into it and listen for long moments and never hear it hit bottom. You think this is as good an end as any and walk off the edge, eyes closed to welcome oblivion.

 

                You wake in your bed again, strapped down. A medic, a man this time, comes to tell you that you fell into a deep mine shaft and had it not been for the leftover rappelling gear used by the miners of old, you would have tumbled to your death without a doubt. A wandering group of dwarves sent to survey the mines found you tangled up unconscious in the ropes and rescued you.

 

                You wonder why you’re bound down if they think it was an accident and you would wager that someone saw you walk off into the dark. You curse your lack of hindsight and think that next time, you will make certain you are not followed.

 

                A steady stream of people filter in through your room. They might be called guests except you do not know most of them and you do not particularly value their company. You find out then that only six dwarves of Thorin Oakenshield’s infamous company remain, and two are mortally wounded including Balin (who you remember also traveling to council in the Iron Hills on occasion) and Thorin himself, though for the time that has passed he could very well be dead.

 

                The evening of your third day bed-bound sees the traffic of people visiting you die down and you are alone with your thoughts once again. Knocks on your door have stopped making you flinch and people have stopped waiting to be acknowledged to enter. This dwarf is no different, limping in to your room. You suspect he is an Iron Hills dwarf like yourself but make no comment.

 

                He walks with the aid of a gnarled wooden cane over to the corner of your room and stops, seeming to inspect a bookshelf that stands against the wall. His mane of hair is coal black streaked silver and from how he is turned you cannot see his face. His right arm reaches to trace the spines of the books on the shelves but he cannot lift it any higher than his shoulder.

 

Dwarves have come to stand in your room for a few minutes and say nothing to you before, but something about this one unnerves you. When he turns his features are vaguely familiar but it is his pale blue eyes that make you snap out of your death trance and the next breath you take feels like the first real one in months.

 

He is so different that it is no wonder that you did not recognize him at first. He is hunched and broken, so different from the tall proud royal bearing he carried himself with. Like Dwalin had said, in the place of his left leg is a wooden peg that extends from the knee down, strapped to the grotesque stump. You shudder as you imagine it reeking and rotting with infection.

 

His beard is shorn and half of his face is mutilated, handsome features warped and melted. Judging by the heavy way he drags himself around the room there are countless other injuries covered by his clothes and you know you never want to see them. There was a time when you delighted in having the King bared before you, but you know now there you will never be anything less than disgusted by him. You want to stroke his hair away from his face and tell him he is beautiful but he does not deserve such _lies_ after all he has been through.

 

As soon as you are released from your binds you are tentative. You want to stroke him and caress him and affirm to yourself that he is here, he is alive, and he is with you. At the same time you also want him to leave because this is just a broken doll of your King, a poorly maintained reconstruction of his face.

 

                Still, when he lays his hands on you, you melt and you make love like you used to whenever he was in your kingdom. He always told you that Dain could not know of your coupling, and that you could get in a lot of trouble. You are a guard, and you could be executed if someone were to find out.

 

You often dreamed of a world where you could be with your King. He used to say that when he reclaimed his kingdom he could have whoever he wanted. He promised to make you his consort. You were overjoyed at the time and the thought had kept you going. When you got word of the quest to retake Erebor you had wanted to join the company, to help your King retake his kingdom and claim your place at his side. He had told you the move was too suspicious, given how the rest of your guard and your leader had refused. He had told you to wait, that you and him would be together long enough, and it kept you going.

 

Now his kingdom was his again and he was free to take any consort he wanted. You told him you loved him and that you would love him until you died. He nodded and left you alone again.


End file.
